Mindset & Money Mastery for Photographers with Karinda K.
Struggling to make real money with your portrait photography business? Tired of feeling like a "starving artist" and ready to build a thriving, profitable brand without burnout?
Welcome to the Your Magic Year Podcast with Karinda K. — where photographers learn how to simplify their business, master in-person sales, and confidently sell wall art that clients love (and actually buy).
Each week, Karinda shares practical strategies, money mindset shifts, and proven sales techniques that helped her grow a multi-six-figure photography business—while working less and living more. You'll discover how to elevate your client experience, price for profit, and attract clients who are eager to invest in your art.
Whether you're a portrait photographer, pet photographer, wedding photographer, or somewhere in between—this show is your go-to resource for building a sustainable, high-impact photography business that reflects your values.
Join Karinda K., an equine photographer with over a decade of experience, as she helps you go from stuck and overwhelmed to confident CEO.
Mindset & Money Mastery for Photographers with Karinda K.
55. Overcoming Burnout with Guest Rachel Stiles
In this episode, theater and makeup artist Rachel Stiles shares her burnout journey and how it led her to build an online community for artists.
We discuss the sustainable elements of a creative career, the crucial role of networking, and the importance of self-worth and clear boundaries in the industry.
Join us for practical advice and personal experiences on burnout, career sustainability, and self-value in the creative industry.
Rachel Stiles: Instagram | TikTok | Website
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Thanks for listening!
Welcome to Mindset and Money Mastery for Photographers the podcast. We help overwhelmed photographers make more money while simplifying their business by mastering their you guessed it mindset and money. Tune in each week for practical and actionable tips to take your photography business up a notch. Let's dive right in.
Speaker 2:I am so excited today to have Rachel Stiles joining us, and I think her timing is perfect for the podcast.
Speaker 2:Those of you who listened to the podcast earlier this year know that I took a bit of a break from the podcast this summer to recover, to give myself some breathing room and just to refresh myself and make my life a little bit simpler and easier for a time.
Speaker 2:And in bringing the podcast back I wanted to bring on some experts that could really talk about different topics that are outside of my realm, and something that Rachel is really good at and that she's passionate about is talking about burnout, and today we're going to talk a little bit about how to manage burnout, which I think is very fitting, considering all of you know that part of the reason I took a break from the podcast over the summer was to give myself some time to breathe and just make life easy for a bit. So this timing of this is kind of fitting, because I guess if I was being brutally honest, I would say that I got a little bit burned out for recording podcast episodes earlier this year. So welcome, rachel. Why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Speaker 3:Thank you, karinda. I'm so excited to be here. I am a theater artist, makeup artist and industry coach who runs an online community for artists, creatives and professionals who are tired of experiencing burnout and want to move forward, with their personal life and their professional life in alignment. That is what I am most passionate about moving forward. From the pandemic. I think that a lot of us had a second wind or got a glimpse of what life could be, and so we're fighting against what life is.
Speaker 3:I've done a lot of things and I've worn a lot of hats, so I started off as a creative commercial makeup artist in the Chicagoland area and I realized that I liked long form projects more and that I had always done theater throughout my entire life.
Speaker 3:I was never very good at being on stage, but I realized that I could meld those two together, and so I started doing theater, makeup and practicing wings and makeup as well. And when the pandemic hit, all of us were completely out of work, and one of the things that I realized is that we don't have a centralized space to network or come together outside of our jobs. So I created that and I am now over the course of creating that. I came up with a system the four things that you need to focus on in order to be successful and experience career longevity and now I have taken that poor message that I've been teaching to my theater community for a year and made it into a system that you can use in your personal and professional life to avoid getting to that place where you feel miserable.
Speaker 2:I think that's really important because I think it's so easy to like. You get so wrapped up and you're so passionate about what you do and all of a sudden you said yes to everything and you're running ragged just doing all the things and then you take a second to breathe and you're like holy crap, something is wrong with me and I don't know what it is, and I think for most people it takes a while to realize and identify that it could be burnout. What would you say is a really good sign of you might be burnout right now?
Speaker 3:I would say for me. I know that when I am burned out, I seek out like a lot more numbing activities like scrolling through my phone or watching TV, because anything that I need to turn my brain off when everything is in balance, I might have that occasionally or occasionally, or like you come home from a hard day of work and you just want to turn your brain off and watch TV. But when you are truly burned out, your mind and body seeks that out on a much, much higher basis and so you start to like just check out.
Speaker 2:I hear this a lot from my coaching clients. When I think they're going through this, it's like I just I don't want to do anything. I don't know where to begin. I have all these things I need to do, but it's just like I don't even know where to go, where to turn, what to do. I just feel like this, like overwhelm of life and everything in general.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's definitely true. I have ADHDs. I experience that as decision paralysis and so I'm not going to. I'm not going to, you know, tell someone that they have that, because I'm not a therapist or anything. But that's definitely true. If you are so overwhelmed by everything and you can't break it down into actionable tasks or what you need to do, that you just sit and let everything overwhelm you, that's a big one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what would you say? Like is the biggest thing to like avoid getting yourself to that place. And I know you and I talked before this a little bit about how important boundaries are as an artist and as a creative, because we just love what we do so much, it's easy to say yes to everything, even when it doesn't feel good or feel right, just because we're so excited and we get caught up in the moment. How would you say people can start setting those boundaries and their business or even in their life to help avoid this?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great question. One of the things that I really promote for freelancers and artists, creatives, anyone who works multiple jobs or deals with multiple clients or is going after different projects right To let go of this idea of work-life balance that other normal nine to five people are. Typically that works for them, right. So, one, if you let go of the idea that you are going to be balanced on a day-to-day basis, that helps a lot, because when we think about true work-life balance, we have to look at a much longer timeline, and so I think it's great that you're taking a break from the podcast, and so I'm going to use that as an example of taking your work-life balance and looking at it in a six-month or nine-month timeline in order to avoid getting burned out, because when you do that, taking three months off doesn't seem like a big deal if you know that in the future you're going to be super busy. So, with people who work nine to five, they can do things like look at their day and make sure that their day is balanced. We can't always do that.
Speaker 3:As artists, creatives and project-based freelancers, we have to look at our month and make sure our month is balanced so that we can look at the whole and say, oh yeah, I have enough days off, because that helps our brain to not get to that point of feeling overwhelmed by the day-to-day and look at the month or two months or three months or six months and put in projects that we know that we're going to be working on in advance and see it as a holistic whole.
Speaker 3:And it also helps because if you are a project-based worker or a year creative, it's not a direct correlation but we do tend to be a little bit more driven. Same thing with people who are starting businesses or entrepreneurs. You know you are creating something for yourself and so when you see a lot of white space in your calendar, that can trigger this like anxiety of, oh my God, I have to fill that, I have to get this done, I have to put this in, I shouldn't have this much time off, right. But if we extend that and we look at it over the course of a month, suddenly a week off looks normal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that, and I think this is an important time to kind of address. Something that photographers really deal with in relation to this is we have seasons, right, we have seasons where maybe it's too cold, especially if we primarily work outdoors. Nobody wants photos when they're going to freeze the bottle, or maybe in Texas it is hotter than I don't even know what to explain the heat level in Texas during the summertime. Nobody wants to get portraits done in the summertime in Texas. That's just insane. And I think that something that I talked to my coaching clients a lot about is planning for slow, deliberate time off from having to create for clients and I say for clients because, like, I think that sometimes we also have to make time to create for ourselves. Yes, however, the heck, we want to create, not just like bound by this person's paying me money. They expect this. I have this timeline, like if I want to go out and I want to photograph some random wild thing that I never felt, let's say, I decided I want to go photograph a Boudoir session because that sounds different and outside of the box and creative to me, because I'm used to photographing horses day in and day out. Right, that's different, that's creative and I can go do that for fun and I can plan time off from actually creating and using that part of my brain and be okay with it.
Speaker 2:I think that it really becomes difficult when your livelihood depends on your creativity and you feel like you have to use your creativity all the time. And I like how you said fill the white spaces in your calendar. Yes, if every white space in your calendar is always filled with creativity, where is the time for you and your own creativity and allowing your creative brain to rest? I think that it is really truly impossible to be creative 365 days a year without any breaks, especially when you're creating for other people, and I think that's whenever our creative something that we love becomes a job and then it becomes a burden, and then it just becomes like this thing that we don't even want to touch anymore where we're like I don't even want to pick up my camera. That just sounds like a terrible idea, like I want to avoid touching my camera because the thought of touching my camera just makes me feel terrible right now and that's a scary way to feel when that's your livelihood in your business.
Speaker 2:So I really like that point. I would say, like for photographers, it's important to schedule that purposeful time off, schedule time to breathe and keep that longevity in mind of I can be creative six months out of the year for my business and then I can rest the other six months because I've planned and I've been strategic and I've set boundaries on my time and on my creativeness and my passion so that I can protect it because it needs to last forever. So I love that you said that. Are there any other tips that you have when it comes to boundaries for your business or for yourself to help avoid burnout?
Speaker 3:I would say, when you're first starting out, if you're going from being a hobbyist to being a professional one, you have to set a value for your work and for what you do, which on the surface level seems kind of obvious, because you're setting a value, because it's a business. But I would differentiate between setting a value for your companies, your work, your clients and setting a value for yourself, because, like when you said, if you need to have creative energy, or like time for yourself for creative rest, etc, you have to know when to say no, especially when you're first starting out, because most people start out in these like hobbyist circles. When I was a makeup artist, that's how I started networking is. I would go to these photography circles and a lot of them were just you know, they were all learning and everyone was learning together.
Speaker 3:I would offer free makeup, and the point where you have to tell yourself, no, I don't need that anymore, or no, I'm not going to do that anymore, is key, because that sets the boundary of I am ready for the next level, I'm ready to start networking on a more professional level, and sometimes you will be doing both at the same time. You might take a paid client while you're still learning and networking in these hobby circles. Setting that boundary for yourself and knowing what your limit is and knowing what your value is is really, really important, because it helps you to say you know what. No, I can move on right. Then you won't be called to say yes to every single little thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's important. It's like in the early phases, when you're learning and you feel like you're at that, like I can't charge for my work yet or I'm still like trying to figure out how to get those clients in the door, is having a really good system and structure for how do I get the people in to build my portfolio? How do I get the people in the door when I'm not quite to the point where I can charge full price, but how do I do it in a way that protects my time? And that's something, actually, that I talk a lot about with people is don't give yourself away for free. Have really smart boundaries in those early days of how to build your brand while you can't quite sell yourself yet.
Speaker 2:And so I have a podcast episode that's called I Can't Even Give Away a Free Session, and it talks about, like, if you're the guy standing on the corner saying like, hey, I have some free sushi, do you want some free sushi? No one's going to take the free sushi because they're like why is it free? There must be something wrong with it, right? Yeah, there's always that person that's like, willing to go like and this is another layer of this there's always that person that's willing to take the free thing and abuse it. So they're not going to come by and take one piece of free sushi. They're going to come, take the whole tray and then they're going to come back the next day for another tray, and another tray, and another tray, and before long you're going to be out of business, because there were those people that were either A not willing to touch the free sushi because they thought there was something wrong with it, or there's that small percentage of people that are willing to abuse and use the free thing.
Speaker 2:So I think that's a really great thing to remember, too is having boundaries in those early days, knowing how to build your portfolio in a way that's smart and doesn't cause burnout before you even get your business off the ground.
Speaker 3:I teach a lot on the four elements or pillars that make up a long-term, sustainable career, and you can apply them to whether to take a job. And so the questions that you can ask yourself to determine whether to take a job if you work in a creative field are one does it pay well? Two, does it get me in rooms that I wouldn't normally be in? Three, does it fulfill me creatively so is this just a really cool work that I'd be willing to do for free, essentially? And four does it free up time and space in other areas of my life?
Speaker 2:Ooh, I love that. That's such a smart thing and I'm guessing, too part of it is you have to have a balance of all four of those things. I think all too often, like people get caught up in the oh, this puts me in the room where I need to be and they forget about the money and the time and those types of things. But I do think there's a balance to those things and something that I think even in my business I'm like 11 years in now to my portrait business, I still am using those things. I'm still sometimes doing things that put me in the right spaces with the right people. I'm still doing things that feed off of those areas.
Speaker 2:But I think the question or the pool in the early days is I will do all the things to get me in the room with the people Like so much so that you almost become and I hate to say this, you also become like a prostitute, like you're selling yourself to get in the right rooms, right, you don't want to feel like a prostitute in your business. You want to feel like I don't know a high-end escort maybe they're really bad to say, but like if you start to feel like you're selling your soul, to get into the right rooms or photograph the right people or to do the right creative things that feed your creative heart, all the time without ever being paid and without ever saving yourself time and money and all those things, then there's a problem. And then, down the road, that's when you're like, oh crap, I'm doing all this stuff but I'm not being paid.
Speaker 3:I'm going to piggyback off of that because I think it's important to remember that, like I think I was I talked about this a little bit before but not elaborated on this. I just made a TikTok video about this recently, so it's fresh in my mind is that there are circles, right, and when you think about creative industries, my favorite way to think about it is like a baby's stacking ring toy. So you might be doing all the things in the one circle, but then you're going to exhaust all of your resources in that circle and you're going to find that you're not moving up. So then you have to figure out how not how to get more work, but jump from wrong to wrong on the stacking ring toy. And there are ways to do that, and I won't go into all of them because I could talk for a while.
Speaker 3:But one of the things that can cause burnout is when you have been in one circle for several years and you know all the same people and you're doing a lot of the same work and it's not fulfilling you anymore and you don't know how to get into those other layers or how to jump from circle to circle, which, by the way, each one gets smaller and smaller and smaller, so then it gets harder to network as you move up because everybody keeps knowing each other in these smaller circles, and so a lot of people get burned out and they quit instead of trying to figure out how to level up.
Speaker 3:So I think that's important that you mentioned that, because you can literally feel like you're running on a hamster wheel and you're not making any headway because everyone in that circle is on the same level, and so a good exercise to do for any industry pretty much I can't take credit for this, I heard it on another podcast is, when you walk into a room, take a look around the room and try and identify at least one person who you would aspire to be or like to be in 10 years, and if you can't find that person, that means you are in the wrong room.
Speaker 2:Ooh, that is really good. I love that. I say this a lot. I say like, get out of your bubble, stop living in your bubble, get out of your bubble. I know you have these people that you're used to being around and that's great, but like they aren't putting food on your table, get out of your bubble. Just be like expanding that bubble in that circle everywhere you go and like making it a part of your life. Because when it comes to like marketing yourself as a creative, it's super easy to get stuck in. Like I post on Facebook, I have a website. Why is nobody knocking down my door? But so is everyone else.
Speaker 2:And I think the number one way like us as creatives can get people and to love us and to buy what we sell which, as photographers, is our work and our portrait is to simply meet new people and show them our face and show them our heart and our soul, because our heart and our soul is our work and who we are as a person, and that's what our clients are buying. They can see pretty pictures all day long, but they buy who we are as people too. So I think that's really important is like get out of your circle, get out of your bubble, get out of your group of people from a marketing perspective and also, I think, from a professional standpoint. Don't hang around with a bunch of broke photographers or artists who aren't making any money, because that's all you will ever be is who you're around. Rachel and I, many tethered through a mutual circle that we are in, and I think that's a big part of why we're in that group is we are surrounding ourselves with people who are not just one or two steps, people that are 10 steps above us. When we see people, day in and day out, doing big, crazy, amazing things with their businesses and their lives and we're like heck, yeah, I can do that too. I can be like those people.
Speaker 2:Those people are in our circles on a daily basis and I think it's important to surround yourself professionally with people who are in your circle, doing what you're doing, but are also above you. Honestly, this sounds bad but, like in my experience, a lot of times I'm having to pay to be a part of those circles, yes, and I think, in a place where, professionally, you're like well, I don't know anybody who's doing more than what I'm doing. I don't know anybody who's building an empire like this, like I want to. So I'm going to have to seek out and pay to be in a place surrounded by those people, because sometimes it is hard to find.
Speaker 2:And I think that's where you were saying you're creating this community for creatives and artists and people in that space to come together Something with my coaching program. That's why my coaching program is a program where we are in it together, where we're having group coaching calls, where you're getting on and you can hear other people's questions, even if what they're saying sounds so far above and beyond what you've ever imagined. That's good, that's how it should be. You should always have the people striving and watching those people above and accomplish those things. So I think that was a super cool point and also relates back to how we met each other.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I'm so glad you mentioned the idea of paying for access, because, with my experience with makeup artists and photographers and a lot of creatives because we're in a creative industry we don't want to do that. And when I teach about our workshop with people, the four pillars or the four elements, I always stress that again nothing is ever going to feel fully balanced. And so if you are focusing on one thing, one aspect of your life or your business or your career, to avoid burning out, you're going to have to pull from and borrow from those other things, those other aspects, in order to raise the deficit on that one thing. So, for example, if you want to level up your networking right, like you said, it can either cost you time, it can cost you money, it can cost you creativity or your creative energy through focusing on updating your portfolio and putting projects, doing spec work, etc. It has to cost you something. You have to pull from one of those other aspects in order to raise that up. And so, if you can't have it all the ways, one of the things like when I was starting out as a makeup artist, I got to that place, like I was talking about before, where I needed to level up, and so I wanted to work with photographers who were on the second level of, like commercial work, beauty work, professional photographers and agency models.
Speaker 3:But if I had set them my portfolio, why would they help me? Why would they lend hand or like give me the time of day when my work was amateur? I had to both assist makeup artists in the next level in order to meet those photographers, and then I had to pay for professional portfolio images, because that's the way that, like I went to like a group session, so I didn't pay as much as like booking a photographer full price. I found a group session where a photographer was going to have like a bunch of models and they were doing specifically portrait work for makeup artists, so that then you're guaranteed someone can see your work, and I paid for it.
Speaker 3:And then, all of a sudden, my work was at the level of the people that I wanted to work with and I have told that so many times to people and that to you know, young artists and often they don't want to hear it because they're like, well, I'm already putting in so much time, effort, energy, et cetera, and I'm networking and it's not going anywhere. And, like you know, if you're pulling from time, from your work, life balance and like doing a lot of free work and doing a lot of testing and it's not working, you have to pull from something else. You have to borrow from the energy bank of either time, money, creativity or people like referrals, right People and referrals.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so I think that's a good point here is that I think if somebody goes out like I'm going to start a business, I think that most people who start businesses think like I'm going to start a business, it's going to cost me money and I'm going to have to go get a loan and I'm going to have to, like, figure out how to finance this new business I'm starting. And I think in the creative field people are like I'm going to start a business and I'm not going to spend any money to start a business and it's not going to cost anything to start a business. I'm not going to invest in myself, I'm not going to invest in the business, I'm just going to pull my shingle out. People are going to come pay me to do what I do.
Speaker 2:I think it's so strange that creatives just don't want to invest to grow their businesses financially. They think that it can solely be a time thing, and I think that a lot of it can be time and just heart and soul. But there is also a lot of times of financial commitment to build and grow and I think that kind of what you were saying, piggybacked on that idea, that I see a lot, or I hear this a lot, I hear this my husband says that I shouldn't spend money on this business because it's not going to make me any money, so I just shouldn't spend any money on it. But I think sometimes things do require an investment in putting your time, your finances, your heart and soul, your resources into it and resources come in a lot of different meanings in order to grow things. So I think that is super important.
Speaker 2:When you and I were talking before, you made a comment about sometimes, as creatives, we experience this guilt, this guilt that comes along with being a creative and doing what we love, but feeling like I'm getting to do what I love, so why should I feel burned out? Because what I get to do is so much fun and all my friends are sitting at behind a desk running someone else's business. I get to work for myself, so I feel guilty that I have these feelings almost. Can you explain that and kind of like what your thoughts are on that?
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely. I think that when we are on the verge of burnout or we are experiencing like symptoms of burnout, we have a tendency to just push it from our brains because of this guilt of having a creative career or a job that we care about and that we are passionate about. With people who do work desk jobs I'm not generalizing or anything, because obviously everyone's different but if you have a job where you just work to live and you don't consider your job to be a passion or something that you care about, you don't feel as guilty over burning out because you don't feel like you should be burning out in the first place. But with us, especially in creative fields, when we have 100,000 people lined up behind us trying to do the exact same thing or get into the exact same industries, we feel that we have to put on a brave face and just say well, I shouldn't be feeling this way because I get to do what I love, whereas my friend is just sitting at a desk and I know she doesn't like her job and so I feel bad.
Speaker 3:But at the end of the day, when you make that shift from hobby to profession, you have to treat your job like a job, and that goes along with letting go a little bit of the expectations around having fun, if that makes sense. When you treat your job like a job, it is much easier to set up boundaries that prevent you from burning out, because you can separate and say, well, my job should not be taking up this much of my time and it should not be causing me to have health problems. My job is there for me to make money and for me to experience a fulfilled and satisfactory life. Essentially, what often happens is in creative fields, we get inundated with outside voices that tell us that we should be grateful all the time and again, taking that holistic approach to gratitude like I'm grateful for everything in my life, right, and my job is just one small factor of that and what I get to do is just one small factor of that.
Speaker 2:But if I made money a different way, I would still be grateful right Like that, something that I've been saying, which I'm not going to lie. I feel a little cynical saying this to people, but I've been saying, if your business was your job and you had someone else to answer to, how would you treat your business differently? If your boss showed up and said, hey, you need to go out and you need to get three clients this month, what would you do differently in your business than you just sitting there behind your computer going, yeah, I really should get three clients this month. Yeah, probably not going to happen. No, if your boss came in and told you to do it, you'd be like I'm going to make this happen and you would go do it.
Speaker 2:We tend to put ourselves in our own feelings a lot of times into our business and then it just becomes this one big old jumbled mess in our brains that our business is our personal life and our creative life and all these things combined and there's no separation. Whereas if it was really a job to us and it was how we paid the bills and made money, and if we had other people to answer to in it, you would treat it totally different, which I think kind of goes back to this idea of like you have to have your own creative time outside of your business because if you don't, it is impossible to separate. I don't know. I always say I feel cynical saying this, but I don't know. That's exactly what you said. But when you were saying it made me think about that and how I'd been saying that I feel like on repeat for the last year of how would you treat this differently if it was your job?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think this is a very important thing to remember. And also, as an entrepreneur or an artist or a freelancer, contractor, et cetera, this was your job, right, you had a boss that came in. You would have a role, and that is something that we often don't think about in our businesses. It's like, okay, what is my role and what am I best at?
Speaker 3:Obviously, when we're first starting out, we have to do everything because we can't afford to have people in our business. But it's also okay to say you know what? I'm not very good at this, I'm not very good at this aspect of my business, so I am either going to have someone teach me how to do it or I'm going to have someone do it for me. You don't have to be good at every single little thing that you do, and that is another way that artists or creatives don't always operate the same way as a traditional brick and mortar business, because we think that we have to do everything because of this imposed value of I don't know how to value myself or the boundaries that I need to set for myself. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it makes so much sense. You said something, and it was I don't know how to value myself, and I would say, like anyone who's listening to this, my question for you would be do you even know how to value yourself? Do you actually value yourself? Do you know that your talent and what you do is incredibly important and incredibly valuable and that your time as a person, even as a creative, your time is valuable and I think that's oh, that's a big one for us. That's honestly why I got into helping other photographers was because, thank God, I had somebody in those early years. Be like Carinda you need to value yourself. You need to charge your worth. Don't ever give away your files, your images. Those are your gold. To the point of like.
Speaker 2:I walked away from that conversation almost in tears, but what I realized was how valuable that was, and I realized that if I could help other photographers in those early years realize the same thing, realize that they are valuable, that they should be charging, that they should be making money, how many people's lives I could change.
Speaker 2:Just like that one little bitty conversation, I had changed my own life and so I got into this coaching thing. I literally started doing a webinar like twice a year and it was like what should you be charging your clients? And I would host this every year or twice a year and I would just do this little free class on how to figure out what you should be charging people, because I realized that it's such an important thing for creatives to have help with and to realize you have to charge money and you're worth it. And I think that's what this all boils down to is realizing that you're worth it and you're valuable. I feel like this conversation has been so interesting and I feel like there's been so many like rabbit holes that I could have gone down.
Speaker 3:I had just worked really hard to see on track In particular women and non-binary people are so often assessed by our experience and not our potential, and so that's why we feel like we have to get all the degrees and all the accolades and all the certifications and everything, and just having ideas is valuable in and of itself and so sort of wrapping up and adding to this idea of placing value on yourself, your business, like when you start a creative venture. So my husband and I go on a lot of brewery tours and the stories are a lot of the same, not generalizing, but like you go and you say, oh, yeah, they're talking about how these two guys just wanted to start a brewery and so they started making beer and it didn't taste very good and they went to their community and their community came together and said, yeah, you should open a brewery. When we work as creatives, we come up with an idea and we think that we have to have a fully fleshed out 10 page plan with bullet points and everything laid out in order to even show it to the world. And so so often we get in our own way of unlocking that potential because we block our ideas from coming into fruition. So if you need someone to just tell you hey, your ideas are valid, regardless of whether or not they work.
Speaker 3:I will be that person. I love that you can write it down, close the book and then not touch it for like six months, and it still has value. And putting that value on yourself and on your own brain is magical. If any of your listeners do have trouble with placing value on themselves, start with an idea journal. Just write down all of your ideas and then resist to the urge to make them work, just the urge to figure out or like a fully fleshed out plan for them. Just have your thoughts, be your thoughts alone and then return to it and say, hey, I have really great ideas, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think where this shows up in the photography space is photographers that say my work isn't good enough to charge money for it yet and they're like work is gorgeous, their work is beautiful, but their work is way better than my work. I ever thought about being and photographers that overly obsess over the quality of their craft as a photographer and they seem to neglect the whole idea of charging money or building their business. And that's where I step in and I'm like stop it. Your work is good enough, your work is creative enough, your work is beautiful enough. But also I find myself echoing this done is better than perfect, over and over and over again.
Speaker 2:Like just put it out there, see what happens, just put it out there.
Speaker 3:See what happens. That reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Ira Glass. I don't know if you're familiar with this one, but I'm just going to read it because he says it much better than I could. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there's this gap.
Speaker 3:For the first couple of years you make stuff and it's not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential but it's not. But your taste, the thing that you got you into the game, is still killer and your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this and if you're just starting out or you're still in this phase, you have to know that it's normal and the most important thing you can do is a lot of work. Again, as women and non-binary people, we get in our own way because we have the vision and we have the taste of what is good, but we think that we have to already have the experience in order to have people pay us for our taste.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think a good way to say it's probably like our clients don't have a taste at all. We go to drink coffee. Okay, we go to this coffee shop. We go like we're obsessed. We go like four or five days a week. I did not drink coffee until the last two years when I had a child, and now I drink coffee. But now I'm a coffee snob because we go to this really nice coffee shop and he makes all of his own syrups. And now I go to a coffee shop and there's pump bottles of syrup and I'm like I can't drink that.
Speaker 2:So we go to this coffee shop and we go all the time and we become friends with the owner and we go and he'll be like hey, I have this experiment, try it and tell me what you think it is. So we try his fancy experiments that he's making and I'm like I think this has lavender. And he's like no, it's actually orange coriander. And I'm like, well, crap, I have no taste for what good really is. He does. He's trying all these experiments and he's like I don't think this one's quite good, but let me give it to them and see what they think. And we taste it and we're like totally off base of what flavors are actually in this coffee that he's making. But guess what, we still love it and we still buy it. And he could give us a cup full of chocolate milk and tell us it's coffee, and I'd probably delete them because we love it so much, we love the brand and we love him as a person. But you know what, like it doesn't matter that our tastes and our tastes buds are not as elevated as his is or that we don't know all of these fancy ingredients he uses. We still go, we still buy the coffee, we love the coffee and we are like tell everybody it's the best coffee in the world. So I think that's a perfect example. Like I'm sure we offend him a little bit and we're like oh, that's that. Oh, I thought that was something else. But right, he's still testing, he's still experimenting, he's still learning, he's still growing. And here we are, somebody who has no taste buds compared to him or idea of what things are that he's cooking up in there, and we love it and we pay him money and we go day after day and we drive 25 minutes to go get coffee four or five days a week. It's a problem. So I'm saying that, like your clients don't know if your work is the best work in the world or the worst work in the world, but if they connect with it and they love it and they're willing to come pay you, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:Since you talk about being a makeup artist, I had my makeup done by somebody one time it was a trial for my wedding and I looked at it in the studio and I thought, oh, that's good. And then I left and I walked outside and realized that my face was green and I was like ooh. And then I was like I read the reviews, there were people that thought this was good. There's lots of brides that probably looked like green Martians on their wedding day because they didn't know the difference in good makeup and bad makeup. Right, it's proof that no matter where you're at, there's always somebody who is willing and, honestly, a lot of times, people are buying who you are as a person. You're not buying your work. They don't know the difference in a good smokey eye and a hooker smokey eye. Let's be honest. So I think that that's really important to remember, too, is stop putting so much focus on feeling like you're good enough to go out there and to have a business, or to charge money and to do all the things.
Speaker 3:Like you were saying before get out of your bubble.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if you could leave everyone with one piece of advice to help avoid or deal with impending burnout, what would your piece of advice be?
Speaker 3:This is hard because, as you have seen, I can talk for hours and hours.
Speaker 2:I will give my one piece of advice. What do you think about yours?
Speaker 1:Sure yeah.
Speaker 2:I have one big takeaway from this, and it's something that I echo a lot Boundaries. Yes, I think boundaries are a good starting place, a great starting place. And being okay with white spacing your calendar was my biggest. Yes, like that is really important, I think, when it comes to all of this, which is something we've already talked about a little bit. So that would be my biggest takeaway from today.
Speaker 3:Think about why you got into your current job to start with. What do you love about it and how do you protect the joy of what it is that you do in your specific niche? Ooh, that's good. When you can identify that, you'll realize that it's all these other things that are sort of creeping up and overwhelming you If your finances are off or you're not making enough money in your business or your work or your job. But you love the fact that you have so much freedom and that you get to be creative and that you get to work when you want and not work when you don't want. Okay, cool, so you love that. How do you raise the deficit or focus on that financial aspect without having it burden your business or your job or your creative? How can you isolate that and say, okay, I'm going to focus on my financial literacy for a little while so that I can protect the joy of what I love to do?
Speaker 2:I think that's important. I think that I always say get back to your why. Why are you doing this? Also, what impact are you making? It's really easy to get lost in business if you don't use your why as your compass, the impact you're making, the ripples you're making in this world. Should we lose track of that too? And I think that can really be a disservice to us in the world?
Speaker 3:Yeah, especially if you're a mid-level professional where you have already gone through a lot of the opening steps and you have chosen a niche right. That's when you usually start getting overburdened and overwhelmed because you are disconnected from what drew you to it in the first place. I will use myself as an example. Part of why I started doing this work is because I was burned out as a theater professional and I was like why am I feeling this way? I've always loved what I get to do, but I made the shift from more freelance to more union and technician work right, which is great. I love it. I love the consistency. I love the way that I know when the shows are coming into town. I love that I know how much I'm working and I love the boundaries that can be set as a technician. This is why I'm using myself as an example.
Speaker 3:It's not for everyone, not generalizing but for myself my work. As a technician I do not get to express creativity, but I'm surrounded by creativity as a theater professional. I can't realize that was like oh okay, I am experiencing the burnout of not being able to be creative at work and having FOMO and watching everyone around me have this creativity, whereas I just have to stand in a spot and make sure that I am ready to go when the actor needs me and that I am focused and I am present. And I am doing technical work, like putting the wig on, putting the makeup, on having someone else's vision come to life Okay cool. But I love that. I love the level that I'm at. How do I protect that? By exercising and bringing up that creativity elsewhere, and that's why I started a business.
Speaker 2:I love that.
Speaker 3:Where I get to be creative and I get to invent new things all the time.
Speaker 2:I love that this has been so fun. I'm glad we got to chat today. Do you want to share how people can get in touch with you if they want to connect with you, learn more? I know you mentioned you have a TikTok. I think you said that I'm not going crazy. How can they find you and how can they connect with you if they want to learn more about how you help creative deal with burnout?
Speaker 3:Yes, absolutely. I will share links with you. You can find me on Instagram my professional Instagram at Rachel Ann Styles. You can also find me on TikTok at the Myth of Making it. The Myth of Making it is the name of the brand, the site, the community, the collective, the offer, the coaching, etc. All of our content is under that Priloh brand, the Myth of Making it. So that is on TikTok, Either one of those places you can find all of our links. I'm also on LinkedIn. I love it Awesome.
Speaker 2:I love that. I will put all of Rachel's links in the show notes as well, so you can go click and go directly there. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been so fun. I feel like we could have talked for five hours. Maybe one day I'll make one of the podcasts where you just sit and drink wine and talk for five hours about random business things, but it would be a very long podcast. So I don't know who would listen to a five hour podcast. Maybe I guess people do. But it was great having you and I look forward to following you and connecting with you more and all that good stuff. So I'm sure everybody will be excited to follow you and read more about what you do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm excited to connect with people. Thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to support the podcast, please make sure you share it on social media or leave a rating and review. As always, you can check out the links and resources in the show notes over at masteryourmindmoneycom. To catch all the latest from me, you can follow me on Instagram at masteryourmindmoney, and don't forget to join our free Facebook group photography business. Tune up with Corinne Decay. Thanks again and I'll see you next time.